Studies are proposed that will investigate the recently-discovered relationship between depressed mood and self-focused attention. Self-focused attention is a state of the information processing system in which one is especially attentive to an aspect of the self. When one's attention is focused on a dimension of the self, one's behavior typically reflects an increased responsiveness to that particular dimension. A vast literature in social psychology indicates that self-focus influences both cognitive and behavioral processes. Although investigations of self-focus and depression have just begun, they are very promising: Self-focus and depression bear several striking similarities; they are positively correlated; and self-focus is associated with some cognitive, affective, and behavioral correlates of depression. However, several critical questions remain that must be addressed by basic research on moods before the relationship between self-focus and clinical depression can be understood. Specifically, how is a state of self-focus created naturalistically? How does self-focus exacerbate moods? On the basis of converging theoretical perspectives from social cognition and from research on the cognitive correlates of depression, specific mechanisms are proposed to answer these questions. First, mood itself is hypothesized to induce self-focus. A second proposed mechanism offers one way in which self-focus in turn intensifies mood. This mechanism concerns the evidence that one's thoughts are typically congruent with one's mood (e.g., sad thoughts accompany sad moods). Specifically, self-focus is proposed to increase the accessibility of mood-congruent cognitions because it activates mood-congruent "self-schemata." These hypothesized mechanisms will be investigated in four laboratory experiments with college student subjects. Each study will involve mood induction and the measurement and/or manipulation of self-focus. The data will be analyzed via ANOVA's, planned comparisons, and mediational regression analyses. The results will advance understanding of the relationship between mood and cognition, and will lead to insights into the etiology and treatment of depression.